24 Replies

If you have a decent enough spec'd laptop/desktop then you can use something like Oracle Virtual Box to create your VMs on. Just make sure you have a decent enough processor and memory. I also have a USB connected external drive which I store my VMs on. Works a treat.

I don't think you need a server personally, but you will ideally need something with a motherboard which supports hardware virtualisation (preferably VT-d), along with a powerful CPU with lots of cores, a large amount of RAM and some fast disk storage.

I opted for a machine with an i7 CPU supporting VT-d, 16GB DDR3 RAM, an SSD for my OS installation (Windows 8 with client Hyper-V) and then a secondary HDD for my VMs to reside on. This is a Dell XPS L502x with a few of my own upgrades, and the second HDD within the optical drive bay.

Any old machine will do as long as it has a good amount of RAM. You can buy an older server, but be sure it can support virtual machines. I have 1 older DELL machine that I run Server 2012 (nativie) on and I have a few virtiual machines running on an I7 desktop with 12Gb of ram. I can run two VM's on it without a problem and still have room to spare.

Depends really on how many VM's you want to run, what they are and what they are doing. Your main consideration is going to be how much RAM you need. it isnt production so you don't have to give everything loads of RAM but giving them enough to run properly is always good. I am guessing that your going to be using HyperV so make sure whatever you get you can get drivers for it. Not a problem with 2008 generally but 2012 could be a bit awkward. Other than that just make sure the processor supports virtualization

For reference I bought a secondhand server on eBay but that suited me better than trying to use a PC and I actually use the VM's instead of it just being for study.

One thing I would say - if this is for home use, you really don't want to be running a power-hungry and noisy server for long periods of time :) Obviously this doesn't apply to the smaller home server units, although if you do intend to run one 24/7, it is probably working how much that is going to cost you in terms of electricity over the course of a year.

As an example, I recently worked out that my spare Dell PC which is occasionally used as a media server is costing me around £80 per year!

Hyper-V is more forgiving than VMware when it comes to specific hardware requirements. Anything that supports VT, VTd, and NX; and has a lot of memory should do. You can get refurbished Core i5 vPro desktops on eBay pretty cheap. Throw a couple extra sticks of memory in there and you're good to go! I'm a VMware guy that just started playing with Hyper-V on what I believe is an HP 8100 Elite Core i5 desktop (can't exactly look at it from here).

...and I wouldn't suggest anything other than Hyper-V for someone taking Microsoft certification courses. This is coming from a VMware fan! :)

Expect to pay a little over $1000 for a pre-built wokstation with a 3770 and 8gb of RAM, or $750 for a white box with 16gb (or more).

The 3770 is going to be your best bet for at-home virtualization, 8 logical processors.

You could save a bit of cash by going AMD, but support is iffy when it comes to the motherboards.

And if you can spend the money, a 3930 is going to give you more oomph, but you probably don't need it.

I'm currently running three Server 2012 installs on an i5 3570 and it runs well enough for a lab, but the extra four logical processors would improve performance significantly, and allow me to install another server or two.

The 3770 is the cheapest i7, so it's the right place ot be, no need for higher clock speeds for a lab.

And at the end of the day you'll have yourself a nice little workstation to kick around when you're done.

It's possible to make use of these as a free trial for up to 90 days; plus there is a way to get multiple virtual machines (shown in cartoon video below - it's long but worth watching all the way through)

I use an AMD FX processor which works great for VM. Ultimately the more cores you have for processing and the more memory you have will be the biggest benefit. You can save money for testing by using either the free VMware ESXi or Microsoft Hyper-V. To run on a workstation the is ORacle VirtualBox or you could use VMware workstation but that will only be free during the trial period. The good thing about VMware workstation is the ablity to then run Server 2012 Hyper-V as a guest OS. You can also download the trial version of Server 2012. Good luck on your lab setup. Here are a few links for the software:

I second that. AMD makes some good bang per buck stuff. If you went home built, you could get an 8 core vishera, with 16 GB of ram, and some storage to boot for around $700 depending on how you do it. Win8 HyperV is a semi neutered version of the one that comes on Server 2012, but it will get you there.

Hyper-V is more forgiving than VMware when it comes to specific hardware requirements. Anything that supports VT, VTd, and NX; and has a lot of memory should do. You can get refurbished Core i5 vPro desktops on eBay pretty cheap. Throw a couple extra sticks of memory in there and you're good to go! I'm a VMware guy that just started playing with Hyper-V on what I believe is an HP 8100 Elite Core i5 desktop (can't exactly look at it from here).

...and I wouldn't suggest anything other than Hyper-V for someone taking Microsoft certification courses. This is coming from a VMware fan! :)

By VMware, I assume you mean ESXi. VMware Workstation and Player will run on anything that runs Windows.

To the OP:

If your hardware has the power and features, you can run Hyper-V in a VM with VMware Workstation or ESXi. You can nest VMs with Hyper-V.

I've built small virtual environments on my Dell e6330 (i5-3360, 16GB, SSD and 500GB data in caddy). I can run Hyper-V with a guest VM as well as other VMs.

The key points are: fast CPU, MB/BIOS that supports virtualization, lots of RAM and a very fast disk subsystem. Ideally, you'll have multiple disks. Personally, I always run my VMs on a separate spindle from the host OS.

If you're going with Windows 8/Hyper-V make sure you research your system to verify that it will work. There are numerous Gigabyte MBs and some models of OEM computers (HP and Sony) that just don't work with Hyper-V.

If you have a newish 64-bit computer you should be good to go. An i5 with enough RAM running Virtualbox works fine. Like others said just make sure hardware virtualization is turned on and no new purchasing necessary.

I am running an old core 2 quad with 6GB of ram with my VMs sitting on a 7200 RPM seagate momentous HDD with vmware workstation, although I only can run one VM with 1-GB of RAM, I have run several VMs for development purposes without any problems.

In fact, I have one VM that runs freePBX 24/7 for my home phone service

FYI MCITP is gone in July replaced by the new tiered certification system.

As far as a server goes just buy an AMD FX processor ( 6 to 8 cores), 16GB to 32GB ram, research your motherboard on VMware's hardware approved vendor list and go from there. Simple.

Newer motherboards will have less support that boards that have been out for at least a year.

A technet sub costs about $350 a year, an educational expense worth its weight in gold.

What did I do?

I bought a decent motherboard, AMD FX 8 core processor, 32GB ram. A couple of 2 TB drives. All for under $1000.

I am running windows 7 and VMWare workstation. You can create entire virtual networks and servers/workstations with that setup. I had at one time 4 servers and 3 desktop VM's running and I still could have run more.

You can study for your certifications with much less than that. You only really want a VMware ESXI server if you are going to study for your Vmware certs.